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Drones Decided the Outcome of the Armenia-Azerbaijan War

(Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Dr. Uzi Rubin - The six-week 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War fought by Armenia and Azerbaijan was the first conflict in which unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) won a war from the air. Azerbaijan's UAVs obliterated Armenia's ground-based air defenses, after which they systematically decimated Armenia's ground forces, including tanks, artillery pieces, and supply trucks, forcing Armenia to accept a humiliating ceasefire. Azerbaijan's UAV fleet included Turkish missile-firing aircraft and Israeli suicide drones. Videos showed the destruction of at least two S-300 air defense batteries inside Armenia by Israeli HAROP drones. The key to Azerbaijan's spectacular victory may have been electronic warfare that blinded Armenian radar. The war offered a glimpse of future battlefields on which unmanned weapons and electronic warfare might predominate. The writer was founding director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, which managed the Arrow program.
2020-12-17 00:00:00
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